Full Moon in Libra | March 31, 20185:36am PST | 10 degrees

Aries is the season of “I am.” As animals bear their young and plants unfurl new foliage, we witness entities differentiating themselves from the primordial sleep of the unmanifest. So too with the human spirit.

Such a process can be a strange and precarious experience, for as we we seek the definition of a self to contain the spirit, we are setting out through the viscous waters of what connects all beings. In the process of understanding the boundaries between ourselves and the world around us, we find relationship with others. Particularly through the mirror of relationship, we find unnervingly important reflections of the self we are creating.

The tension of the yearly Full Moon in Libra is, and always will be, between Self and Other. We are called to harmoniously equilibrate our need for separateness, with our need for others, and we are called to do this without creating a pendulum-of-extremes vibration. There is paradox built into the equation.

The beauty of the Libra Moon is its capacity to hold the taut string of this paradox with grace, however the aspects to this Full Moon do not make an easy time of it. The heavy metal Saturn and Mars conjunction in Capricorn squares this Moon, and Mercury is Retrograde in Aries, quickly approaching Cazimi (conjunction with the Sun). As we stride toward grace, things could get awkward.

Mercury’s Retrograde (Rx) through Aries has been squaring the Mars-Saturn conjunction as well, and in the process it has been gleefully depositing compulsive thought patterns into the collective psyche, as well as wreaking the usual havoc associated with Mercury Rx on communications, travels, and financial/legal agreements.

There could be substantial demands to revise boundaries within relationships during this lunation, and don’t be surprised if they comes through harsh circumstances. It will be important to define ourselves as autonomous entities with individual needs within relationship, and conversely we will need to cultivate strong awareness of how much we actually need each other. A Libra Full Moon likescompromise, and Aries Sun hates it. Therein lies the paradox: the self is always mediated by others, but too much of this, and the self fails to hold its own in relationship. We have to maintain the "I am" but we have to be able to mutate it grammatically when it is fitting to do so. If Aries is the symbol of “I am,” then the Libra Full Moon signals the motion toward “I am with,” “I am among,” and “I am connected with.”

In order to coexist constructively and creatively, we must curb the will o’ the wisp disposition of Mercury Rx in Aries and get real about how and why we love each other. As Fred Rogers said, “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like ‘struggle.’ To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” And in order to love others in this ethical fashion, we have to be clear on loving ourselves exactly as we are as well.

Getting clear on this will be particularly available the day after the Full Moon, when Mercury is exactly Cazimi at about 11:30am on April 1. If stress gathers around your mental space on Saturday’s Full Moon (for Full Moons heighten emotional status and this one is particularly stressed), give it until Sunday to shine the god light on the core of the personal issue. Then is the time to dive into a conscious revision of your response patterning.

While Aries is eager to cleave boundaries and declare the self individuated, gentle Libra really just wants us all to get along. The greatest mistake we can make as we define our own form is to think that we are truly separate, for the individual’s need of others is simply an expression of our matter-of-fact interconnectedness. The price of this mistake is existential and eventually literal alienation.

A final word on this Full Moon: Venus, ruler of Libra, enters her other honeyed domicile, Taurus, about 10 hours before this Full Moon. This is highly fortunate, for it softens the harshness of the Mars-Saturn square to the Moon. Venus in Taurus will relax us into the fact that we all need some modicum of pleasure and prosperity in this life. Be wary of the conditions for extravagant or unrealistic yearning that leads to compromising personal needs for attractive lifestyle. At the same time, don’t forget that all agreements ultimately want to push us toward a more holistically pleasant experience of the earth journey. Libra’s love for the balanced scales of Justice requires constant effort, unflinching realism, and an unwavering gaze trained on the good life befitting all.